Grand jury clears officer in fatal shooting

Rookie fired 4 times as naked man charged him

The fatal shooting of an unarmed naked man in May by a rookie Anne Arundel County police officer was justified and no indictment will be considered, a grand jury found yesterday.

The action ends the criminal probe of Officer Tommy Pleasant, said John McLane, a spokesman for the Montgomery County state's attorney's office. The office handled the case at the request of prosecutors in Anne Arundel, where Pleasant's mother is a police officer.

After apparently using drugs and calling police in what they said was a delusional state, Donald E. Coates, 20, fired shots and leapt from a window of his Glen Burnie townhouse around 6:47 p.m. May 24. He peeled off his clothes before hiding behind a utility box. Ordered to surrender by police, Coates ran toward the 22-year-old Pleasant. When Coates did not stop, the officer fired four shots, police said.

"It seems like the only time when they go into a grand jury and come out without an indictment is when they go in with a police officer's case," said Warren A. Brown, a lawyer for Coates' family.

Anne Arundel County Police Chief P. Thomas Shanahan said he was relieved. "I wish Mr. Coates wasn't dead, and I'm sorry that he got killed and I wish there was a way of using less than lethal force."

"There was a lot more to the case than just a naked individual coming toward him," said Michael E. Davey, Pleasant's lawyer. "He heard the 911 call, he heard the radio broadcast that [Coates] had a gun, that he'd fired shots. Until you've been in the position he's been in ... it is easy to second-guess."